Right, so I'm pretty sure I'm near the end of the game at this point. I just allowed the GF fleet to access the Pirate Homeworld for a bit of Star Wars-esque combat, and now I've saved after hacking a Leviathan ship to transport everyone to Phaaze via wormhole. I think I'll do a bit of item collecting first; I found the map satellite room (or whatever it's called) in Skytown to help with this task.

As epic as the boss music was, I found the fight against Omega Ridley sort of easy, yet still fun. It's amazing how this guy keeps coming back, though he's by far not the only villain in gaming that seems to have infinite lives. XD

Finally....I love Samus's corrupted face more than ever at this point. Seriously, it's creepily blue/green. I feel that it would add to the game for her to have a little more erratic behavior at this point besides the random Hypermode overloads.

Really breaking out all the stops for Metroid I see. So, what, can Nintendo just not make games anymore? They haven't developed a Metroid themselves in forever — even longer if you count Retro separately. From what I can find, Singapore has worked on (not developed on their own, but contributed to) an unnamed Ace Combat game, Tales of Berseria, Mario Sports: Superstars, and Riiiiiiiiidge Racer!

Yeah... no. Labo is more the Splatoon, Animal Crossing, or Wii [Insert Activity] teams' speed. I have to believe Nintendo aren't chronically cheap and Retro are making something singleplayer, although direct horror would be unprecedented for Nintendo — even if it makes sense with some of MP3's environments.

It's definitely not Labo. And the horror game is another ''rumour'' without a proper source as far as I know.

The only reliable rumour we have is from Liam Robertson, from a year or so ago. He talked about the relationship between Nintendo and Retro. How it's apparently the most expensive studio for Nintendo to keep up and running. How they are allowed to pitch three concepts to Nintendo, if they're all turned down, they get assigned to a game. It's how they came to make DKC: Returns. Tropical Freeze was their own idea, after the success of Returns. Anyway, that rumour said Nintendo green-lit one of their own concepts, and it was highly likely that they are currently working on a new IP.

Labo strikes me as the kind of project that, if it's not possible to be done by one studio alone, you'd want the teams doing each thing (software + peripherals) to communicate as easily as possible. Why involve Retro at all?

Chances are Retro was working on something after Tropical Freeze that got canned or at least heavily reworked mid-production, for whatever reason. 5 years is a long ass time for a prolific ~90 people studio to not put out anything.

@Haru17 Horror isn't as unprecedented as you make it out to be. They did publish Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Requiem after all, and to a lesser extent Geist (such a mediocre game for an amazing concept... though it was resurrected in some ways with Super Mario Odyssey)

I'm not sure how to take the rumor of Bandai Namco working on Prime 4, but I can only hope that a lot of QA checking in about...well, EVERYTHING is going on. Granted, I'm still taking this with some salt until we know for 100% certainty. (Though there seems to be some credence to this rumor)

As for Retro....While I suspect it may be another DKC game of sorts, knowing their track record, it's bound to be a decent game.

As someone who was skeptical about MercurySteam's involvement with Samus Returns, Bamco deserves the vote of confidence. They've worked on Smash, Mario Kart, Pokkén and Star Fox, off the top of my mind, and it's not like the team won't be heavily supervised by Nintendo reps.

@MarcelRguez The (rumoured) team behind Prime 4 didn't make those games though. That would be like saying Kirby is guaranteed to be a good platformer, because Nintendo also made Tropical Freeze. They kinda did, but HAL isn't Retro Studios.

A better comparison would be Star Wars 1313, since it's rumoured that some of the people behind that game are working on Prime 4.

@Octane Of course, but those games weren't developed by the same team either. I'm just pointing out that the teams at Bandai Namco, plural, have worked well enough with Nintendo in the past. I'm not saying it's a guaranteed success, I'm just saying it's not a receipt for disaster.

About the Star Wars 1313 thing, turns out Jason Schreier commented on ERA that it's a bit of a misleading point to make, since the people employed in Bamco weren't the creative drive behind the game, just people doing grunt work. That tampers my excitement a bit, but it's nothing too major.

I honestly feel like this Bandai Namco rumor is overselling Bandai Namco having any relevance to the actual game. I feel like this might be another situation where "YEP NINTENDO SURE DID HIRE GUYS TO HELP MAKE THEIR GAME" with zero interest in anyone in Bandai Namco having significant creative control over anything in the game.

Bioshock is 10 years old. Let's play through its horrific environment and see why its so beloved!LeT's PlAy BIOSHOCK < Link to LP

I actually think Bandai Namco could do a great job on Metroid. Don't get me wrong Retro could do a good job but a new team full of new ideas with Nintendo providing a guiding hand well that gets me excited.

@Octane Of course, but those games weren't developed by the same team either.

...You didn't get what he was saying at all, did you? Point is: Singapore didn't make any of the games you may like Bandai Namco for, they're a support studio at best. Even MercurySteam had lead development on AAA games before. Nintendo probably didn't want to invest and get someone good for a 3D Metroid like they've gone cheap on the majority of their 8th gen releases.